John Kostrzewa: R.I.'s cities need most help closing job-skills gap

The difficulty of matching unemployed workers with available jobs, a problem called "closing the skills gap," has bedeviled Rhode Island governors for decades.

Despite spending millions of dollars, the state still has tens of thousands of out-of-work or underemployed people and thousands of employers who complain they can't find the help they need.

Now, Governor Raimondo is trying again.

She and Scott Jensen, her hand-picked Department of Labor and Training director, have started a new effort, called Real Jobs Rhode Island, that puts the design of skills-training programs in the hands of business managers who know what they need, not state bureaucrats. They already have handed out $5 million in grants to 26 teams of private companies, nonprofits, educational institutions and industrial associations.

Raimondo says she has turned the state's skills-training program on its head.

Not really. I give her credit for giving employers a stronger hand in directing what they need. But her plan doesn't go far enough.

It doesn't reach the chronically out-of-work and underemployed people who live in urban areas such as Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, Woonsocket and West Warwick. Those workers need more targeted education and skills-training programs if they are ever going to land a job and contribute to Rhode Island's economy.

That became clearer when I read two reports -- one by Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, a Providence College professor, for the Urban Initiative Program at the University of Rhode Island, and the other by the Economic Progress Institute, the nonpartisan research and policy organization based in Providence.

Both reports point out that the growing population of people of color who live in the cities is having the most trouble finding a job. Both reports call for focused, improved workforce-training programs to give people the skills to land a job, curb poverty and strengthen the economy by including everyone.

The report by Jordan-Zachery, a political science professor, is the most detailed, based on Rhode Island and U.S. data, and focuses on the shift in the state from an aging, white population to one that's more demographically diverse.

She found that women, and more specifically women of color, have unemployment rates higher than other groups in cities. It's even higher for women who head households.

And, she notes, they have not been helped by "one size fits all" job-training programs.

"Working women of color have a different experience with the labor market than women as a whole," she said. "Policymakers should address workforce development programs that target these populations."

Jordan-Zachery's report said that job-training programs that have reached women of color in cities tend to focus on low-skill jobs that don't pay enough to support a family.

She also said the programs do not recognize the geographical "spatial mismatch," explaining that while the women live in the central cities, the jobs they are being trained for are in the suburbs and they often have few transportation options to get there.

Some of the same points were highlighted in the Economic Progress Institute report, which calls for increased state investment in adult education, including literacy, numeracy and English-language skills.

"Because minority workers in Rhode Island have levels of educational attainment that lag levels of white Rhode Islanders, their prospects for future prosperity are also reduced," the report says.

"We need more resources focused on helping adults learn English so they can gain skills they need to support their children's education and so they can get better jobs," said Mario Bueno, executive director of Progreso Latino, in the report. "We also need dual language strategies that can provide equitable career training opportunities for adults with language barriers."

The recommendations make sense.

And other leaders are starting to raise the same concerns.

For example, Raimondo has embraced the economic strategy laid out in a new Brookings Institution report, which identifies certain industries for development and emphasizes skills training, especially in science, technology, engineering and math.

But at the widely publicized unveiling of the report, Armeather Gibbs, a senior community development analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said, "We don't often talk about the poorer communities and being left behind when we're talking about economic development, and that's a key consideration for Rhode Island, given that we have 13 of our communities that fall under the poverty or moderate income [level.]"

During a discussion at the Economic Development Planning Council, which adopted the Brookings report, Neil Steinberg, president and chief executive of the Rhode Island Foundation, said, "We need to lift a lot of the populations that are not benefiting from the economy and be as inclusive as possible and close all of those gaps that we have in education and income."

DLT Director Jensen responded, "And I would add that while that’s a moral imperative, it’s also a flat-out practical imperative. We just can’t get this done without [ everybody]."

Those are all important points.

It has been only a year since Raimondo took office. Nobody expects her to fix the state's economy and close the skills gap with a snap of her fingers.

She has made a start with Real Jobs Rhode Island, but she has to understand that Rhode Island's economy will grow stronger only when all Rhode Islanders are included and contribute. That's how success will be measured.

With reports from Staff Writer Kate Bramson

John Kostrzewa is the Journal's assistant managing editor/business, commerce and consumer issues. Reach him at (401) 277-7330 or email jkostrze@providencejournal.com. Follow his posts on facebook.com/JohnKostrzewa or @JohnKostrzewa on Twitter.